Valence can feel Isidora's blood boil as she marks off in her head people who are complicit. People who are willing to have blood on their hands over this. She gets a sense of terrible hurt and disappointment when Casey makes his choice, a worse one when the doctor does. She can feel a sense of dread and doom followed by a resolution as Isidora brings her glasses once more to her eyes with trembling hands, hides behind her scarf, and kneels in whispered prayer. This time, anyone who cares enough to listen (and has sharp enough ears!) will find she's not praying from scripture but rather offering up a feverish prayer of her own design.

"O God above, judge not too harshly the fear in my heart, the hesitation with which I accept the task you have laid before me. Judge me not, because I am no servant of fear, but of you, Almighty Father. If this be the hour of my death, then let it come as you wish it, be it swift or slow, soft or pained, let my agony last so long as you will it, let my death come at the hour you have appointed, and let-- let me be forgiven for my own helplessness, should you find it within your eternal mercy to forgive such a sinner as me. Please, Lord Christ above, know that it is not--- it is not willingly I accept my role in this evil, but only because I wish to do your will separate from it, understand that I struggle and suffer and will soon breathe my last not for arrogance or pride but for advancing your eternal glory, O Lord. I am nothing, but you have granted me strength that I may be something. Where I was weak, you gave me strength, and where I was sinful, you gave me salvation. Though I have sinned in my thoughts and words, in what I have done and failed to do, I implore you, Lord, grant me the strength to pursue righteousness, and if my death soon approaches, let it serve your righteous will. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, may I be delivered from my enemies. Amen."

City Description:
Come on, you know this place by now. Maybe this guy will actually do something to clean it up, at last.

Character Description:
A man of average height with short black hair. His father was a Chinese immigrant to America, while his mother's family were super white. He keeps himself clean shaven. At only 22 years old, he's still fairly young, and is sometimes assumed to be younger – about 19 or 20 – at first glance. He has a nasty scar on the back of his left hand from a fight he almost lost a few months ago – a clear distinguishing feature.

Character Personality:
Still overcoming the frustration of having little control in his own life. Driven. Intent on enacting big changes with his newfound power. Short-tempered, short-sighted and angry at times. Bold, eloquent and inspiring at others. Brave to the point of recklessness, and idealistic in his goals, but far from naive.

Character Background:
David Zhang has some Chinese ancestry, though he's never been to China himself. His father came to America as a child, while his mother's family had lived in America for generations. He's an only child. He is, without question, a true red-blooded American. And just like a true red-blooded American should, he suffers in needless poverty caused by capitalist excess. It wasn't always so bad – his mother came from a fairly well-off middle-class family, and his childhood was spent without much in the way of worries.

Then David's mother died during the alien war, trying to rush them all into the basement. His father was injured by shrapnel, left paralyzed and unable to walk, and was quickly bankrupted paying medical bills. Zhang had to drop out of college to get a job and make ends meet and cover his father's debt. He spent some time looking for employment before landing a full time job as a janitor at a slightly sketchy research lab in Iron Heights, keeping the place clean and not asking any questions. Even so, he couldn't afford his rent and had to move somewhere cheaper – to Glory Hills, also known as the Gutter.

The Gutter is not a nice place to live, and his 'affordable' neighbourhood was particularly rough, especially for someone who used to live in a nicer part of Henryville. The local gangs were far from friendly, and his hot temper and lack of patience got him beaten up a few times by hardened thugs. He tried to learn lessons in self-defence, though with mixed success – he had a better track record at simply blending into crowds and slipping away before he could get noticed, only falling back on fighting when he had to, and usually only to try and escape. One time, he was cornered, and almost lost his left hand to a knife – he was extra careful from then on.

Of course, it turned out the 'slightly sketchy research lab' David worked for was actually part of the Daedalus Research Group, a relatively new company with unclear ownership that did research into all sorts of strange things related to understanding superpowers and creating artificial heroes. Their work was highly confidential, so it kind of made sense that a high-tech laboratory like that was hidden inside an old industrial building in Pauldros. Their research was still a long way from being safe, but they were still working on it for their anonymous shareholders. It wasn't like they were going to release it into the wild yet.

When the robots attacked, the scientists were panicked. The lab, like the rest of the city, was getting invaded, and the state-of-the-art security systems would only hold for a few hours. The frightened scientists grabbed the janitor, who had spent the last two months wearing a bandage because of a 'fight he won', so he must be a good fighter, right. And they tried to convince David to defend them. When he explained he wasn't really that good at fighting and was as scared as they were, they convinced him to let them inject him with a serum – one that was obviously tested and safe, trust them – that would make him a far better fighter, practically invincible, able to protect them all.

It was a desperation play. David lay down on a medical bed, and they injected him with the serum – in their fear, more than they thought they probably should. He was out for an hour, convulsing as it forcefully remade his body. Now, from the outside, he still looks the same – but in reality he is very, very different.

Costume Description: A blue janitor boilersuit and a half-mask.

Character Advantages:
Reinforced Endurance: Though not the strongest of his alterations, David is mildly tougher than he was with a higher pain threshold, as well as being slightly faster healing and more resistant to disease. Generally speaking, he can carry on for a time when others would be debilitated by their injuries.

Heightened Perception: David's senses and intuition are now far more acute. He can see high levels of detail at great distances and hear whispers across a room. Beyond that, he can also read people's intentions from their body language if they aren't good at hiding them and observe how they are aiming weapons or swinging their fists as they attack, tying into his ability to dodge below. These senses are far beyond normal human limits, giving him an almost unnatural danger sense when, for example, he is about to be struck from behind.

Preternatural Agility: The most powerful (in combination with his perception), tactically useful and obviously unnatural of David's alterations is his lightning reflexes in combat. Time seems to slow down to David in combat situations, allowing him to easily dodge and parry attacks he predicts. His muscles are also slightly enhanced, allowing him to move and attack in combat a little faster than normal humans would expect – though to him, he still feels like he's moving in slow motion.

Improved Athleticism: Mildly improved muscle density and physical endurance allow David to sprint further distances and keep active for longer before getting winded. He is also physically stronger than he could before. Even so, these improvements don't advance his capabilities beyond human limits, instead just pushing them towards the top of the scale.

Character Disadvantages:
Sensory Overload: David's enhanced senses do not deal well with rapid flashes of bright colour, shouting crowds or other constant sensory bombardment for more than a few seconds. A flashbang is just as debilitating to him as anyone else, but consistent exposure to sensory overload can become even more debilitating if he doesn't get out of the light and noise.

Adverse Reaction: David's altered physiology reacts strangely to seemingly random phenomena. Though he could potentially react bizarrely to anything he touches, commonplace things won't affect him differently on contact alone – but he's in for a surprise the next time he tries to eat meat, and alcohol will affect him differently to what he's used to. He's unaware of any new reactions he might have, so that's up to Cid to surprise me with.

Friends and Family:
Steven (Xiuying) Zhang: Father, paraplegic and slowly dying due to damage to his spinal column, living in care funded by his son's work. Used to work in municipal transit as a train driver.

Theodora Zhang: Mother, deceased.

Dr. Emily Stolzhafen: Genetic Scientist at the Daedalus Research Group, she was the one who convinced David to let them inject shit into him. Slightly more empathetic than the rest of the scientists, though still relentlessly logical.

Richard 'Ricky' O'Shane: David's neighbour and only real friend in his neighbourhood. Good-humoured and quick to make a joke. Works as a gas station attendant. They go drinking together sometimes.

"I'm not going flood." Says Wendy simply, coming out of her daze. She needed to doze and recover, okay? That explains a lot! She comes back to some white-hot anger and honestly, it seems pretty justified. "I'll go assault. NOT murdering people seems pretty heroic, yeah?"

Team Assault - Team devoted to assaulting the primary robot base early in an attempt to distract robots from Rainwalk and possibly end the robotic threat before Texas must be flooded! Maybe save a few civilians? Who knows!

And so two KNIGHT stealth transports were loaded up with various heroes, agents, and the occasional god. Blasting off from the KNIGHT ship's hangar, they both went off in different directions. One went towards the central Permian basin, while the other went towards Rainwalk. The dropships were both identical, having ten seats on each side of the ship facing one another, along with two seats at the front. One for the pilot, and one for the co-pilot. The Flood Dropship was piloted by Agent Jasper Wolfe, while the Assault Dropship was piloted by Agent Helen Hung. Each dropship had doors at the side for jumping out, as well as a rear loading ramp.

So feel free to make conversation as your dropships head towards the mission area. I'll be keeping the thread united, since making PM adventures with such large groups would be hard.

Whoever posts first from each team can decide on a color. That color will need to be used in all future posts from each team, to keep things clear.

So if Team Flood picks blue, that'll be the color every member of Team Flood posts in until the groups are reunited.

Same goes for Team Assault if they pick red (as an example).

WOO! Good luck, guys. I'm giving you a last chance to socialize before the missions begin properly.

"Well." That was pretty much the first thing to break the silence. Emily didn't really have anything to say, but sitting in complete silence only made it all worse. They were going to flood Texas, and that was kind of fucked up! If it was the best way to save the world, though, Emily was forced to conclude that it was better than flinging themselves against the robots and dying, dooming the entire Earth at the same time.

Emily was in way over her head with this 'fate of the world' nonsense. She's a doctor, not a superhero.

Casey had looked at the assault team roster and... Well, he swapped out all his weapons except his hammer for stock-piles of medigel and stuffed them into backpacks. He didn't particularly LIKE the look of this crew, but even though this looked like a suicide mission, he thought he could likely be more helpful with them, so he hupped onto that ship instead. He really wasn't too interesting in fighting robots, his plan was to dump medigel on people, bury when he could, and knock down/bury as many holes into walls and doors as possible.

"So... Hurray for team Assault?" He said weakly, giving Nines a slight side-glance. He'd remembered her contagious pep-talk and figured she'd have the best chance of... well, ideally dispelling what he suspected were some martyr mentalities going around here.

Oh wait, what the hell, cobra king was on this team? God damnit, Casey took a moment to mentally promise himself he wasn't gonna dump any medi-gel on that guy. Or...none for Lone Star possibly too. If like, helping Lone Star would put him out of his way then nah.

Colour is #FF0000 by the way, first column, second row on the generic colour options.

“One day you wake up and realize the world can be conquered.” - Doctor Impossible

Max shrugged and fiddled with some of the electronics he brought. He had also grabbed some plastic explosive, and was currently making remote trigger bombs. Since he had the robot body Emily was in for reference, he set up the triggers to go off whenever a robot body got close enough once they were primed.

"Make sure to stay away from these guys," Max said as he made another trigger.

He also built a small remote that he could use to activate or disable the triggers.

Isidora checks and rechecks her revolver before starting to sharpen her blade.

"We aren't likely to make it out of this. I think that's fairly apparent. But I'll fight by tooth and nail to ensure your safety, and the safety of the innocents down there. I will fight to the death to ensure your safety."

She stands up.

"The path laid before us is grim. But you've chosen to walk it. And I appreciate that. Know this: I will not abandon any of you. From here until oblivion, my blade is by your side."

"Well," repeated Yasmine, by way of solidarity. This was straight-up terrifying. "I just want to say thank you, everyone, for coming with me. I was," she took a deep breath, "kind of not super thrilled to go into the robot infested ruins all on my own. I feel a lot better with all of you here." All of... whoever they were? Man, she followed superhero stories religiously on TV and she didn't recognize half these people. Some blue armored Lady, and whoever Lux's friends were, and were those ones really gods? Way to be late to introductions, you missed your chance!

"I'm going to try talking to my friends and see if they know anything else that might help us out down there. If anyone has any questions they want me to ask, just let me know. I know they want to help us if they can."

Maria put a hand on Siren’s shoulder, nodding. As... much as she didn’t want to be there, didn’t want anyone to be there, didn’t want being there to be a thought in the first place... there they were. Damn if she wasn’t going to try to make it as quick and uhh, ‘painless’ as possible. “... What kind of place are we going into anyhow, if you know?”

Yasmine nodded back at Maria, then bent her head and closed her eyes. A moment later, she opened them again!

"It's the ruins of their old city. They don't know what's down there now - it was destroyed long ago - but they say they'll try to help guide us, and that all we need to activate it is my spear. They also say it's a long way down, though. So that could be better."

"Hey, we're almost to Rainwalk," Jasper said back to the group. "Be ready. They'll be hitting us hard once we land."

Flood Team's dropship flew in low over the city limits before speeding through the buildings of the city center and making a landing in a rather secluded courtyard. The rear and side doors opened, and a number of patrolling robotroopers were gunned down by the dropship's cannons!

The spear was guiding Yasmine towards a nearby sewer manhole cover.

***

"Right, I'm going to take us down here," Hung said back to Team Assault. "It's a while out from the base, but this way the robots won't be able to see us approaching. Better for us this way."

The dropship came in for a landing, coming down on a somewhat clear (albeit bumpy) dirt trail mostly meant for horse riding. The robot base was a couple miles away over some small hills. They'd need to send a scout if they wanted a detailed description of the defenses.

"Depends on what we're planning exactly here. If we're here to rescue civilians, the only reason I can see for them to be here is as hostages, so they're likely going to be obviously viewable. Are we scouting up first or anything?" He squinted into the distance. "Dunno what weird shit they may have set up though. I'll dig anyone anywhere they wanna go.

“One day you wake up and realize the world can be conquered.” - Doctor Impossible

"YOU ARE ALL GOING TO LET ME AND DEVANA SCOUT FORWARD TO SEE WHAT WE'RE DEALING WITH. AFTER THAT, WE'LL FIGURE OUT THE BEST ANGLE OF ATTACK AND PLAN A SENSIBLE, LESS SUICIDAL ASSAULT FOR THE REST OF YOU."

He crosses his arms.

"FOR ANYONE WITH KNOWN WEAKNESSES, THEY WILL HAVE THEM PRESENT. IF ANYONE SEES BASEBALLS, KEEP THE ROOKIE AWAY FROM THEM. IF ANYONE SEES SALT, LET KANE KNOW BEFORE HE MELTS HIMSELF. IF ANYONE SEES A ROBOT ATHEIST DECRYING GOD WHILE SURROUNDED BY TURRETS, KEEP ISIDORA AWAY FROM IT. SO ON, SO FORTH. WHILE YOU ALL ARE KEEPING THEM OCCUPIED, I'LL SNEAK BEHIND ENEMY LINES WITH ALL THE C4 I BORROWED AND FIGURE OUT IF THERE'S A CENTRAL REACTOR I CAN BLOW. I DON'T THINK WE SHOULD FREE THE CIVILIANS UNLESS WE HAVE A PLAN FOR HOW TO KEEP THEM SAFE FROM ALL THE KILLER ROBOTS. IF ANY OF YOU HAVE IDEAS THERE, FEEL FREE TO TOSS THEM OUT."

"I'll try something. No promises." Lex attempts to create an illusion of some marines disembarking from the ship and scattering in various directions! She'll attempt to cover the heroes in invisibility as they go, but that's kind of a large area while focusing on the illusions, so she'll focus on Siren, herself, and whoever keeps nearby!

She wants to see if the illusion fools any of the robots! She's not sure if they can see through it!

"I was thinking I tunnel closer, with say, Vigil and anyone else sneaky, pop up closer to the base, let the scouts scout it out, and then if all is good bring everyone else closer and then tunnel everyone through as far as I can, and if it's bad, get the scouts out of there quickly when they run back to me, and then everyone figures out what we're doing."

"That way ideally, the scouts can map out the best tunnel route, I'll get them a bit closer for scouting and if they're noticed I can get them out of there safely."

“One day you wake up and realize the world can be conquered.” - Doctor Impossible

"The issue still stands, we have no idea what the area looks like, so move with scouts or not you still might pop out in the middle of a group of robots. We're better off taking a first look from a distance."

That said, Simon isn't going to press it much because he's probably way less experienced. If they go for it, he'll wait behind with the others for results.

"Two things - first, dirt is pretty damn thermal insulating, so the robots won't be able to see them underground. Unless they've carpeted the place with seismic detectors and can somehow tell Casey digging from the regular sounds of the earth moving, or hell even animals digging around, the chances of them surrounding his exit point is small. Second, haven't you ever heard of peeking? Just make a small hole to look out of first!"

He rummaged around to see if he could find any tubes or pipes or something, as well as anything polished enough to use as a mirror.

"NO, NO, IF I START MAKING NEW TRICK ARROWS WE'LL BE HERE ALL DAY, MAKE US A PERISCOPE AND I GUESS WE'LL GO WITH KANE'S PLAN FOR SCOUTING THE AREA. PROBLEM IS, BEST WAY TO SCOUT AN AREA IS TO GET HIGH UP. IF YOU CAN DIG ME OVER TO A ROCK FORMATION I CAN CLIMB UP AND LOOK FROM THERE. LET'S FIND A STREAM BED ON THE WAY, THOUGH, I WANT TO COAT MYSELF IN MUD SO I'M HARDER TO THERMALLY DETECT. GOOD CAMO, TOO."

"Okay, stopped caring, doing my thing, whoever's coming get in the tunnel." Casey said, just beginning to dig a hole right there in the path. Shame people didn't get that, at best, he really only had a rough idea of how far he'd go without being allowed to use, since Googol maps and stuff was down so... well, luckily he'd have wide areas of margin to be within. Plus, if the robots did see them, this was essentially a distraction force anyway so, eh.

He'd dig for what he guessed was a mile, and then, to keep crazy bow man happy, try to pop up somewhere near a higher outcropping of dirt. Not in it, near it. He... yeah, even if he could, he wouldn't give a shit about the stream mud plan.

“One day you wake up and realize the world can be conquered.” - Doctor Impossible

Valence approaches the drop ship pilot and clears her throat, leaning into them. Gotta communicate the plan all covert-ly.

"Yo, pilot man," She begins, all eloquent-like, "Me 'n Nine don't wanna do flood plan or assault plan. We wanna try to save as many people from the flood junk as we can before this assholes wipe 'em out. You down to take us?"

Then she leans out and says, "Isidora! Hey! C'mere!" And then she'd explain the plan once she got her butt on the ship!

Her lips slowly curl up into a smile at the mention of the plan. Much as she'd be happy to martyr herself, this seems like a plan that could do more good, and would fly in the face of that mass murdering fuckhead Bevill.

"I'm in with you. One hundred percent. I know what I said about standing firm with the rest of the group, but this provides us an opportunity to do some actual good, rather than simply get ourselves killed to advance the plan of a lunatic. I'm by your side in this."

Max made a shiny extendable periscope with the tools he had! Woo! Vigil presumably took it before heading out.

Casey, Marcus, and Devana burrowed beneath the earth, occasionally stopping to look around with the periscope. Before long, the robotic base came into sight.

Built in a valley, the base seemed to consist of a massive walled compound, with a landing strip, hangars, countless factories, a giant bunker door leading underground, and numerous other buildings. Thousands, if not tens of thousands or robots patrolled the grounds and perimeter, along with heavy combat vehicles, drones, dropships, and and giant spiderbots. The base had at least ten of those walking around.

Along with those, the base seemed to have a whole lot of rocket artillery, SAM launchers, and other fun toys. On top of it all, it looked to be surrounded by a minefield, with only a few safe paths leading in.

***

Agent Helen Hung looked back towards Valence.

"Pilot lady, actually," she said. "Met your predecessor at DC. Nice lady. And yeah, I'd be willing to fly you guys around. The bigger ship is going to be providing support and extraction once this is all done."

"Heh heh heh he-Nope. Fuck no, not even if all of us were here, nah, nando, yea-no, uh-uh, whoo nelly, no." Casey said, just shaking his head.

Like, what the hell? That was a ridiculous amount of angry robot hate to get by. "Okay, so, if we're noticed anywhere in the surface layer, they'll probably just blow the shit out of that area we're in, rather than mess around with sending swarms at us. We are not gonna be able to do anything to help with that mess, unless we figure out some way of getting inside the underground past everything else first."

“One day you wake up and realize the world can be conquered.” - Doctor Impossible

Assuming the group didn't have coms, cause the robots could pick that up and slaughter us, Casey would tunnel back to the group and give them the grim horrible news, taking back vigil and Devena if they wanted, or telling them he'd come back in whatever integer of a hour was reasonable for the tunnel journey. So, therefore, rest of Assault team could know what was happening and formulate plans and discussion.

"Yeah, we're fucked if they see if above ground. I can't imagine inside and in the lower levels of the base is gonna be much fun either, figuring either traps or rooms full of death or what. I don't see how we can distract them either without everything around the distraction area getting scorched earthed. 10 spiderbots guys. 10. And I doubt they'll be kind enough to all shoot at Rookie at the same time, although that'd be convenient if we could make them all focus fire in one go somehow at us. I mean, we'd probably all still die anyway in the barrage sans Rookie, who'd get killed afterwards or something, but still."

“One day you wake up and realize the world can be conquered.” - Doctor Impossible